Advent Calendar: Christmas Ham … Onstage

For the December 16, 2010 Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories: Christmas at School. What did you or your ancestors do to celebrate Christmas at school? Were you ever in a Christmas Pageant?

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Was I ever in a Christmas Pageant? Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me away from one. I loved to sing (fortunately, I could do it on key), I loved Christmas, and I was a complete and utter ham. What more could a person need?

And Christmas songs! Couldn’t resist them. Volunteered at age eight to stand in front of the class and belt out “Silver Bells.” Realized that in a Catholic school I should have done a religious song, and offered “Silent Night” as an encore. Was politely told to sit down.

My school didn’t do the classic pageant from what I remember. We did a sort of Christmas revue, in which each class did one big number. Then, at the very end, we would do a Nativity scene tableau with a select group of kids dressed in proper costumes, while the rest of us sang something (not “Silver Bells”) softly in the background.

The class numbers were a mixed bag. One year we had a 12-kid lineup doing “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” in which each of us unfurled a poster depicting our day’s gift as we sang it out. It took forever to get through those twelve days, due to delays in singing caused by fumbling with posters. I sang the nine ladies dancing bit, and was extremely bitter that I wasn’t assigned the five golden rings.

I remember another year in which we sang “Silent Night” in German as my (German-speaking) mother winced at various manglings of the original text. (“Schlayyyyyf….. in heimlicher …. Roooooo.…”)

Children’s pageants may well be a long-standing tradition in my family. Although it doesn’t involve a holiday pageant, I was charmed to discover this item from the Brooklyn Eagle dated April 14, 1918:

“Toy Shop” Aids Hospital Fund

The Bay Ridge Hospital will increase its building fund by a considerable sum from a children’s musical extravaganza which pleased a large audience at the Bay Ridge Presbyterian Church, Ridge Boulevard at Eighty-first Street, yesterday afternoon. The production, “The Toy Shop,” included popular airs in a plot laid in a toy shop. The toys come to life through the genii of Aladdin’s lamp and are turned back into toys by a jealous little miss … One little doll named Babykins, kept in tissue paper as specially precious, was a wee tot of 2 years old, little Catherine Haigney.

So there’s a star turn by a Haigney child of yesteryear! I haven’t identified her positively yet. She might be my father’s eldest sister, although the age reported is a bit too young. At any rate, the show sounds adorable.

And tradition marches on. Only yesterday, I listened to my eight-year-old and her classmates sing their hearts out at the annual Winter Concert. As long as there’s a December, there will be kids treading the boards — and parents biting their nails in the audience.

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One Comment on “Advent Calendar: Christmas Ham … Onstage”

Loved your post!! I also loved Christmas time during my childhood school career – if there was singing involved, I was at the front of the line! Iam sure at some point during my childhood I was also asked (politely) to sit down – I so enjoyed the trip down memory lane. Thanks for sharing!